Sega announces Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing

Recent happenings of pertinence to Sonic fans.
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Wombatwarlord777
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Re: Sega announces Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing

Post by Wombatwarlord777 »

Sorry for posting off topic, but I'm really glad that Dasher mentioned Sonic Heroes.

I went back and played through the game's Hard Mode for the last few nights. Of course, all the flaws of the game (wonky physics, the inane conversations, bottomless pit syndrome, ect.) were all there, but also... I noticed how rich and diverse all the game's environments were. Each of the game's seven zones are all distinct and memorable, while at the same time feeling as if they aren't too dissimilar (probably because of the checkerboard motif used most everywhere). The music is usually spot on for the feel of each individual act as well. Altogether, it's the last console Sonic game I've played that looks and sounds like a Sonic game (both in terms of quality and capturing what might be called "Sonic-ness") until Unleashed rolled about.

I'm a sucker for games with gorgous presentation, and I've been suckered into purchasing such games that also have bad gameplay / level design / other fundamental shortcomings before. Yet, I don't really see Heroes as one of those games. It's flawed, yes. But I thought the teamwork gimmick was appealing, maybe moreso if the levels were built around using that gimmick for exploration, in addition to traversing obstacle courses. Also, if the game were part of a more appropriate / new franchise, I think people might of been more forgiving towards it.

So, tl;dr summary, I loved Heroes's visuals and music, thought the gameplay was decent, and believe it isn't as horrid as people make it out to be.

Also, I suppose I'm the only person who found the Egg Pawns at least a little charming?

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Re: Sega announces Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing

Post by Wooduck51 »

Shadow is so badass that he doesn't drive a car, he drives a motorcycle powered by despair and shattered dreams.

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Re: Sega announces Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing

Post by Wombatwarlord777 »

:roll: Oh, stop that.

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Re: Sega announces Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing

Post by Neo »

Wombatwarlord777 wrote:Also, I suppose I'm the only person who found the Egg Pawns at least a little charming?
They are a little charming. But then you notice they all look the same.

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Re: Sega announces Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing

Post by Dasher »

I guess Sonic Heroes carried a little of the left over pixie dust of SA2 but it wasn't enough Sonic Heroes was an enjoyable gimmick at the least, but only as a gimmick (not to mention it killed the chaotix characters and Metal Sonic horribly (the voices were still ok tho). Then there was Shadow for PS2...and those who didn't noticed Sonic died at Heroes noticed it in spades when that Hedgehog puked GTA and 4KIDS all over us.

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Re: Sega announces Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing

Post by cjmcray »

Neo wrote:
Wombatwarlord777 wrote:Also, I suppose I'm the only person who found the Egg Pawns at least a little charming?
They are a little charming. But then you notice they all look the same.
So? It makes sense they'd all look the same as they are probably spit out one-by-one from a big machine in Eggman's (er, Metal Sonic's?) lab.

I agree with Wombat's statement. Sonic Heroes wasn't an excellent game by any means, but wasn't a bad game either. Music was great, levels were fun (though a few felt tedious) Graphics weren't perfect, but they were still colorful and decent. I still sometimes pop it into my XBox and mess around with it. The only thing that really bothered me was the character models were a drastic step backward from the detail they had in the Adventure series. (And the whole Metal Sonic turning into Godzilla thing)

Shadow was the biggest offender in the Sonic franchise. It basically was a Shadow-centered Sonic Heroes mod with bad graphics, shit storyline (even worse than Heroes storyline) with guns, mild swearing and 4Kids voices added.

Sonic 2k6 is infamous for being a bad game as well, but I haven't played it yet, (and have no desire to) so I can't comment on it.

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Re: Sega announces Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing

Post by Neo »

cjmcray wrote:
Neo wrote:
Wombatwarlord777 wrote:Also, I suppose I'm the only person who found the Egg Pawns at least a little charming?
They are a little charming. But then you notice they all look the same.
So? It makes sense they'd all look the same as they are probably spit out one-by-one from a big machine in Eggman's (er, Metal Sonic's?) lab.
That's not what I meant. In the originals, it's obvious Eggman is mass-producing Beetons, Nal and Unidus. There's several of the same type of robot, but each species is distinct from the next.

In Sonic Heroes, every enemy is the same. Some have swords, others shields, others are made of gold, a few with wizard hats, some with wings for limbs and a few giant ones with mallets. And they all look the same.

Very rarely do you encounter any original designs. There's the Gameron in Grand Metropolis, the Klagens in Casino Park, the Rhino Liners in Rail Canyon and the incredibly generic E-2000s from Egg Fleet. And the rest is pawns pawns pawns pawns pawns.

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Re: Sega announces Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing

Post by Kogen »

If you had to mass produce robots for Sonic Heroes, would you really care either?

May as well put generic robots in a generic game.

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Re: Sega announces Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing

Post by FlashTHD »

Not that this is defending it or anything, but Sonic Heroes is technically a beat 'em up that thinks it's a Sonic game.

Think about it.

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Re: Sega announces Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing

Post by Neo »

Kogen wrote:If you had to mass produce robots for Sonic Heroes, would you really care either?

May as well put generic robots in a generic game.
So your argument is that since the bathroom is already dirty, might as well shit on the floor.

Okay.

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Re: Sega announces Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing

Post by Wombatwarlord777 »

I guess one reason I liked the Egg Pawns is because they were so friggin' vulnerable. Nearly every badnik/robot before has some sort of offensive or defensive mechanism. But without shields, lances, or guns, the Egg Pawns can only hope to wildly run into their adversaries. And yet they do so with the greatest of enthusiasm.

It's a bad comparison, but I kind of admire the Egg Pawns on the same level I admire the Rabbids of Rayman lore: Both are perpetual underdogs of villians, and they each keep coming back for more inevitable abuse, time and time again. It only makes sense that the Egg Pawns are mass-produced. It helps them fulfill their ultimate destiny: To get continously knocked down.

It's obvious that Eggman had totally lost it by the time he started producing the Egg Pawns. Throwing any sort of practicality out the window, he designed his main infantry of robots to have just one distintive trait: To resemble him not only his goofy appearence, but also his determined persona. Baring Metal Sonic, there shall never be a more tenacious breed of robots than the Egg Pawns.

In short, I've just wasted about five minutes formulating and typing these last three paragraphs of useless text. I'm sorry for wasting your time as well.

Although I liked the Egg Pawns, I also wish those beat-em-ups were more evenly balanced with the more specialized, animal-like robots.

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Re: Sega announces Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing

Post by Dasher »

If they wanted Eggman-like scouts, this is all I want.
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Re: Sega announces Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing

Post by Opa-Opa »

Sonic Heroes was fun. I thought it had a classic feeling to it, with checkers, zones with acts 1 and 2, emeralds that are actually in special stages. I think the effort was there. The story and cinematics were nice and it was fun to see Metal Sonic going all T-1000 (though it sucked to see him go all giant lizard). Not perfect, but fun. It was nice to see the Chaotix back, even with a retarded Charmy Bee.

But bottomless pits are a huge problem.

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Re: Sega announces Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing

Post by Dasher »

I enjoyed Team Chaotix the most because their attitude was perfect, but their designs and storyline got killed IMO. Sonic Heroes was the beginning of the End.

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Re: Sega announces Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing

Post by Arcade »

The only reason Heroes looks fun is because of the games they did after it. Play games done BEFORE heroes, and is another deal...

Really, they could have done Sonic Adventure 3, but they did heroes and Shadow...

Is that hard to copy a videogame called Sonic Adventure, that was made like, in 1998? Unleashed was somewhat close, but they had to include a werehog, plus since the game was multiplatrafor, it fell and played like a game from five years before its release...

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Re: Sega announces Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing

Post by cjmcray »

For a game that prides itself on teamwork, you could mostly just run through the game with only one-character, only switching to Tails now and then to reach a high-spot or Knuckles to knock down a wall. I think the game needed more moments where the team was split-up. (Don't even get me started on Tails being stuck constantly dragging Knuckles and Sonic) New paths needed to open up only to certain characters.

The bosses also needed improvement. Most of them were recycles (Egg Storm, Robot Carnival, Egg Hawk, Egg Albatross) or really badly designed team-bosses. You could easily defeat most of the bosses as just Sonic. The boss sections were the areas that should've focused the most on teamwork, as they provided the greatest challenge.

(Metal Madness and Metal Overlord were the only bosses that tried to do that. Metal Madness really failed at it though. Metal Overlord was the only boss to really do team-combat right, utilizing each character's strengths to take him down.) Every boss should've focused on taking him down as a team, not just attacking it repeatedly as the character of your choice.

(Example: Say there's a giant robot boss. It starts off invincible. Switch to Knuckles to climb up its backside and hit a switch, temporarily disabling it. Switch to Sonic and home-attack it while it's down. Boss gets up, and starts shooting off missles. Switch to Tails and toss Sonic at its head repeatedly. Boss gets invincible again, repeat cycle.)

Despite its problems, I still liked the game, and even though it wasn't as good as the Adventure series, I still consider it the last 'great' Sonic title. I actually wouldn't mind a Sonic Heroes 2 if they could fix some of the problems of the original.

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Re: Sega announces Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing

Post by Crowbar »

cjmcray wrote:Switch to Knuckles to climb up its backside and hit a switch, temporarily disabling it.
Could you even climb as the power characters in Heroes?

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Re: Sega announces Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing

Post by cjmcray »

Crowbar wrote:
cjmcray wrote:Switch to Knuckles to climb up its backside and hit a switch, temporarily disabling it.
Could you even climb as the power characters in Heroes?
..Oh yeah, I forgot you couldn't do that in Heroes...

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Re: Sega announces Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing

Post by Opa-Opa »

Ugh. I actually went back and played Sonic 2k6 today to see if I could finally finish it. Feels like homework. Actually, feels like torture.

The game is such a mess. Everytime I play it I find some new disturbing feature.

Today I went through the snowboarding level. You can snowboard up the hill with no difficulties (except for the horrible control, but that happens downhill as well).
There's no breaking noise when you punch and break a boulder with Knuckles.
More apparently useless annoying loading screens.

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Re: Sega announces Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing

Post by Wombatwarlord777 »

I've had the fortune to never play Sonic 2006 except for the Kingdom Valley demo. HOWEVER I've since watched a few snippets of SA's "Let's Play Sonic 2006". So, needless to say, I now consider myself an authoratative expert on everything pretaining to the game.

The thing that most sucks about Sonic 2006 is that, at least in terms of structure and gameplay, it's the closest thing to a successor to the original Sonic Adventure, which I think most people regarded as a great game for its time, and still perfectly good and fun today.

That comparison alone demonstrates how backwards Sonic Team was at the time (of course, another interesting, if more disturbing paralell is Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis), especially in regards to attention to quality and basic functionality.

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Re: Sega announces Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing

Post by FlashTHD »

Interesting thing that occured to me not long ago:

Notice, in the E3 2006 trailers, the super speed area of Kingdom Valley has Sonic with an actual wall-kicking animation when jumping from rock to rock. Not hurtling retardedly in a spread-eagle pose upside down and headfirst, like the final game. Now where might that have gone, and why? That contributes to the possibility of some sort of mid-development crisis, to see a detail that (seemingly) worked just suddenly get axed and made worse.

Here's some more food for thought though. Naka seemed enthusiastic about the project when showing its' prototype off at TGS '05. Middle of next year, he quits Sonic Team. In interviews since then he's admitted he'd had enough of not being able to be as hands-on with games as he used to. Also, during those TGS presentations he seemed pretty convinced that the only player character for the game was going to be Sonic. Now... black helicopters and all, but is it too much a stretch to suggest that maybe, some upper management meddling in the design process for 06 took place that, in the course of events, finally tipped Naka over the edge?

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Re: Sega announces Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing

Post by Opa-Opa »

Sega's marketing team has too much power in their hands. That's what I think.

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Re: Sega announces Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing

Post by Kogen »

cjmcray wrote:
Crowbar wrote:
cjmcray wrote:Switch to Knuckles to climb up its backside and hit a switch, temporarily disabling it.
Could you even climb as the power characters in Heroes?
..Oh yeah, I forgot you couldn't do that in Heroes...
Too busy holding hands.

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Post by Isuka »

Dasher wrote:Isuka or the current Sonic Team is like obsessed with Sonic Heroes, that's the music they have on the "green hill" type stage.
No I'm not... unless you are talking about Iizuka.
Wombatwarlord777 wrote:It only makes sense that the Egg Pawns are mass-produced. It helps them fulfill their ultimate destiny: To stretch 2 minutes worth of mediocre platforming into a tiring 15 minutes bot-bopping piece of crap.
Fix'd. All this Heroes' nostalgic foresight-influenced revisiting shit doesn't work on me. I played the game out of spite on a SideWinder and then again on the PS2; utter crap, both times. I just recently had my way through Shadow, and it actually was the slightest bit a better game, design elements/ themes notwithstanding.

On Sonic 2K6: I thought we were over with it. Half the development team reassigned to Wii's Secret BUTT CHEESE, Day/ night cycle cut, animation cut, features aplenty cut, QA bug reporting ignored... sigh, and so on and so forth.

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Post by gr4yJ4Y »

Isuka wrote:I played the game out of spite on a SideWinder and then again on the PS2; utter crap, both times. I just recently had my way through Shadow, and it actually was the slightest bit a better game, design elements/ themes notwithstanding.
I'm curious as to why you liked Shadow more than Heroes.

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